


Haunt their houses (pleasantly)

by risinggreatness



Series: Circle 'round the sun [84]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 21:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3333305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risinggreatness/pseuds/risinggreatness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Solo children discover a small hideaway at the Naberrie family home (not EU compliant)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunt their houses (pleasantly)

The Temple is old. The Senate is old. But grandmother’s house _is_ old: the smell of the soft, worn furniture, the stray tracks of dust in odd places. The halls are long and wide and smooth; it’s easy to skid across the floor. It’s the opposite of the Falcon, but mom likes it. ( _Mom likes the Falcon too, so it’s okay._ )

Staying there makes Bee feel like an actual princess.

There are balconies like at home, but everything looks different. At night, dad points out stars to them from the stone balconies. He explains hard stuff to Pres; mom holds Bee and Sam in each arm. Bee shudders against the night air the same time her sister does and mom pulls them even closer.

There’s so many stars to see here, even more than from the Falcon, which doesn’t make sense to Bee, marveling at it all anyway. Past the moons, the stars are millions of tiny bright dots against the dark sky, obscured by the puffs of breath that escapes Bee’s mouth. Some fall in single white streams.

Dad tucks blankets extra tight. Bee wakes up when Sam kicks them off. The sky’s all pink, making everything seem warm.

Pres sneaks into their room and joins them in looking out across the lake and leafless trees.

“You don’t remember, but the first time we came here, everything was green.”

“Nuh uh! You don’t remember!” says Sam.

“I do too!”

“You were younger than us now, how could you?” Bee asks.

They’re so busy arguing, they don’t hear mom come in. Her hair’s down, which Bee thinks makes her look prettier, though she almost never sees mom like this. ( _Bee wonders if her hair will ever get that long. Sam vocally threatens to cut hers all off, but only when dad’s around._ )

“Girls stop teasing your brother. Come downstairs, you need to eat.”

They follow her out the door, one after the other.

\----------

The snow’s almost melted, but the wind still blows too bitterly. Reading in the bright and sunny kitchen is fine, but it lets a draft in, deterring any work being done.

Padmé isn’t satisfied.

She gathers up her school holos and marches straight into the library.

“Going somewhere?” father asks; eyes just above his own holos. He and mother exchange knowing looks.

“My corner,” she replies authoritatively.

“Aren’t you getting a little old to hide behind the furniture, dear?” mother laughs from the couch.

Maybe she is, but she isn’t ready to give it up quite yet. Nested between two of the massive bookshelves, Padmé cannot be seen by those coming and going on business, listening to father’s conversations. ( _Being nosey, he calls it._ ) It distracts her, but it’s still a good place to get work done and to find peace during the cold months.

She makes it cozy.

Mother and father’s low, sporadic conversation continues; Padmé almost disappears.

She runs her hands along the walls, her fingertips warm to its touch.

\----------

Court dress sucks. The way mom’s mouth twitches when Pres says it makes him think she agrees, but won’t say otherwise.

Stuck waiting for mom to finish with Bee and Sam, Pres sits on the back of a couch in the library, legs swinging. He looks around the room absently. More holo and real books than he’s ever read, but maybe mom and dad combined.

He wanders over to a shelf and pulls off a holobook: _Proceedings of the two hundred and seventy-third Nubian high council_.

Pres flips through it; it’s boring and he doesn’t understand half of it, but he keeps his eyes sharp for grandmother’s name.

It’s there, quite frequently, in fact. Pres supposes it should be, seeing as it was into her second year as queen. Every sighting of ‘Amidala’ makes Pres’s heart skip in an almost unfulfilled anticipation. It doesn’t make her seem any closer, but it comforts Pres to know she figured out how to be a queen.

If she can do it at fourteen, surely he can figure out how to be a prince at eight, once and awhile.

The book becomes boring quickly. ( _Dad says he’s glad mom’s the politician in the family; Pres thinks likewise because it means he won’t ever have to be._ ) Discarded on the empty table, Pres resumes scanning the countless volumes. He comes to the end of the shelves, when he notices something unusual.

“Pres!” voices call from around the house.

He bolts from the room, the gap between the bookcases forgotten.

\----------

The thin sheet of ice cracks easily under the toe of her boot, water spilling out onto the sandstone. Sam lets out a long exhale, breath curling and trailing slowly upwards. Everyone else can prefer the house in the summer, when it’s hot and humid and the water looks blue.

Sam likes it grey: grey skies, grey trees, grey water. It’s a natural habit of the endless glass of Coruscant and plated metal of ships; grey, cold Naboo. Her lightsaber stands out all the more brilliantly against it.

Or maybe it’s because she thinks the house fits better with dead of winter. Never mind it was built for summer.

She turns and retreats inside.

No one else is there yet. Until then, the house is empty and silent, except for Sam’s footfalls echoing against the walls. She makes a pot of caf in the kitchen; places her lightsaber on the counter. She’s lost the habit of needing it every second of every day. ( _Bee learned it first, but there was a time, when they found their crystals together, neither were without them._ )

She carries the mug close in her palms as she wanders. There’s so much space for so few people living here. She steps out onto one of the bedroom balconies ( _who needs all of this?_ ); bracing against the wind. She’s gotten used to it. The caf loses its heat; Sam goes in again.

Bee’s arrived. Sam finds her in the library ( _there’s a surprise, Sam rolls her eyes_ ), her own mug cupped in her hands.

Despite being inside, Sam shudders.

“Doesn’t this place always feel kind of creepy to you?”

Bee shrugs, but rather wistfully, “It reminds me of her.” And after a pause, “But yeah, kind of creepy.”

Sam crosses the room to the corner where the bookshelves extend beyond a wall.

She glances at the niche behind one, then at her sister then back at the niche. Bee requires no hints and jumps across the couch to beat Sam into the hiding spot, though it’s no contest.

Squeezed shoulder to shoulder, there isn’t really any room to move, but they’re both in a fit of giggles. When their laughter subsides, they hear the door close.

“Hello?” asks Shmi.

“Back here!” Sam calls.

Shmi appears around the corner, a bottle of wine in each hand.

“Celebrating a little early?” Bee asks, eyebrow raised.

“Master Seddwia said it was okay. Besides, I have an in with the examiners,” Shmi smirks.

“What’d you have?” Sam asks, pointing to the bottles.

“A blossom and a Corellian merlot, but there’s a Bespin port in the kitchen –”

“Corellian,” Sam and Bee say at once.

Undeterred, Shmi continues, “And an emerald –”

“Corellian,” Sam and Bee repeat.

“There is no dealing with you two. Whatever, the blossom’s for me then,” she sighs, sitting and passing the bottle of merlot to Sam and Bee.

The corks pop, and huddled together, Sam and Bee both hold to their bottle, Shmi with hers, clink together.

“To Shmi, the newest Jedi knight in the family!”

Not the last.

\----------

“I wanna see that Pres didn’t make it up!” Sam protests.

“I didn’t –”

“Sam – your dad wants to get the Falcon in the air while the engines are still warm,” Leia says, trying to suppress the groan she knows creeps in her tone anywhere.

Trailing behind her children, Leia follows ( _dragged, more like_ ) them into the library.

“He says there’s a hiding space behind the books!” Bee asserts, again.

“I heard you all the first time. Uncle Luke and I have combed this house over, there’s no way –”

Leia stops short. Right in front of her is a gap between the wall and the bookshelves is a little space – a space for children to hide away, for children to be children.

It’s almost as if she hears another voice beside her.

“Your mother approves.”

**Author's Note:**

> See author bio for discussion on this 'verse.


End file.
